Yesterday the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) honored work by NPR and a bundle of our member stations with Edward R. Murrow Awards, one of the highest recognitions for excellence in journalism.

Why the prestige? Since 1971, the RTDNA has considered award nominees' ability to live up to the legacy left by the late Edward R. Murrow.

Why Edward R. Murrow? An early pioneer of television broadcast journalism; Murrow joined CBS in 1935 and gained initial notoriety for his eyewitness reports on World War II for the network. In what can only be described as a simple twist of fate, CBS sent Murrow to London in 1937.

After Murrow caught word that Germany had annexed Austria at the hands of Adolf Hitler, he organized a team of journalists to report on the conflict as it expanded across Europe. Keep in mind that the presence of American broadcast journalists abroad was still minimal. While Murrow and his team (known as "Murrow's boys") were some of the first broadcast journalists to report back on the war, they were limited to filing their stories via radio broadcasts. Their broadcasts became Americans' primary source of news coming out of WWII and set the stage for Murrow to become an American icon. When he later took on Joseph McCarthy, standing up to the former Senator's anti-Communist crusade, Murrow solidified his legacy as a symbol of knowledge, freedom and hope for the future.

NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep and the show's staff produced a three-part series from a Venezuelan prison, from which their reports of kidnapping, police corruption and a prison system in complete disarray put a human face on deadly statistics.

NPR investigative correspondent Howard Berkes and CPI reporter Jim Morris investigated a slew of horrific, and preventable, deaths of farm workers who "drowned" after becoming trapped in grain bins. The series points to OSHA's roll-back of related penalties and disturbing patterns in their enforcement.

The investigation based in Louisville, KY, points to the story of Richard Carley Hooten, a six-time convicted felon who raped and strangled a 17-year-old woman, to spotlight holes in the state's legal system.

Reporter Ben Bradford follows a day of protests in Raleigh led by the NAACP against policies coming from Governor Pat McCrory and North Carolina's Republican-dominated legislature. Approximately 80 of the 1,200 people who organized at the state capitol were arrested for civil disobedience.

The story of William Greer, a blind runner who, along with his sighted guide (Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!host Peter Sagal), finished the 2013 Boston Marathon just minutes before multiple explosions ripped through the crowd waiting at the finish line.

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